OUR MONISTIC RELIGION. 351 



progress we have made in facility and rapidity of 

 conveyance has given even the less wealthy an oppor- 

 tunity of approaching them. All this progress in the 

 aesthetic enjoyment of nature — and, proportionately, 

 in the scientific understanding of nature — implies an 

 equal advance in higher mental development, and, 

 consequently, in the direction of our monistic religion. 



The opposite character of our naturalistic century 

 to that of the anthropistic centuries that preceded is 

 especially noticeable in the different appreciation and 

 spread of illustrations of the most diverse natural 

 objects. In our own days a lively interest in artistic 

 work of that kind has been developed, which did not 

 exist in earlier ages ; it has been supported by the 

 remarkable progress of commerce and technical art 

 which have facilitated a wide popularization of such 

 illustrations. Countless illustrated periodicals convey 

 along with their general information a sense of the 

 inexhaustible beauty of nature in all its departments. 

 In particular, landscape-painting has acquired an 

 importance that surpassed all imagination. In the 

 first half of the century one of our greatest and most 

 erudite scientists, Alexander Humboldt, had pointed 

 out that the development of modern landscape-paint- 

 ing is not only of great importance as an incentive to 

 the study of nature and as a means of geographical 

 description, but that it is to be commended in other 

 respects as a noble educative medium. Since that 

 time the taste for it has considerably increased. It 

 should be the aim of every school to teach the children 

 to enjoy scenery at an early age, and to give them the 

 valuable art of imprinting on the memory by a drawing 

 or water-colour sketch. 



The infinite wealth of nature in what is beautiful 



